Census Bureau Pursues New Questions on Race and Hispanic Origin

The Census Bureau has released a lengthy research report that endorses dropping the word “Negro” from Census forms, and takes a step down the road toward rewriting the way it asks Americans about their race and ethnic identity. The work is an effort to match categories on the census form with how Americans see themselves. The Census Bureau news release said the research represents “the largest quantitative effort ever on how people identify their race and ethnicity to start off the planning cycle for the once-a-decade census.” Links to the report, presentation slides, video and audio from the Census Bureau news conference releasing the report, and a technical session that included provocative commentary from former Census Bureau Director Kenneth Prewitt and New York University scholar Ann Morning, can be found here.

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